PPL Owners doing 50hr checks

[XX621]

How realistic/practical is it for a PPL owner to do their own 50hr? In this case, with no prior experience? Do you need in-depth familiarity with the type?

I refer to an Annex I type, early 70s vintage, Continental IO-360 engine.

All comments welcome.

[Tall_guy_in_a_152]

The era of owner maintenance is starting to come to an end for bureaucratic rather than practical reasons.

The complexity of checks will vary from type to type but on our PA28 with IO320 engine they are straightforward, especially if you can change the oil in your car.

There is a schedule to follow and you would need to be walked through it at least once by your engineer or someone familiar with the type.

It is easier and more fun if there are two of you working together.

That said, our group has decided to stop doing the checks ourselves this year. Our CAMO was not happy and although we found one who was OK with it we decided to stay put.

Do you need in-depth familarity with the type?

On the contrary, it is an excellent way to gain familiarity with the type.

[IO540]

I do my own 50hr checks, accompanied by a friend who is an A&P/IA.

I do the easy stuff (a quick engine run to warm the oil, plugs out and cleaned, oil drained (sample taken), etc. He does the rest. We knock it all off in 3 hrs and that includes extras like packing some bearings with grease (which almost nobody does but should) and attending to any outstanding items.

Doing 50hr checks yourself not only saves a great deal of money (at the usual fixed rate they represent a nice income to a firm doing them) but it also teaches you the basics of what to watch for, e.g. leaking exhaust pipe joints, etc.

Highly recommended.

[smarthawke]

Tall_guy_in_a_152 he say: '....but on our PA28 with IO320 engine...'

I think if you look again under the bonnet, your PA28 will have a carburettor on its O-320, not fuel injection....!

Engineers rest the case....

[stevef]

True, there's not much to a 50hour check and anyone with basic mechanical knowledge and a good pair of eyes can carry one out i.a.w the schedule (after a walk-through as tall-guy-in-a-152 says). I'd specifically suggest paying attention to spark plug torquing, wire locking and the use of a new & approved sump plug gasket. And DON'T pressure wash your wheels otherwise you'll end up with dry and corroded bearings.

[dg93]

XX621

I will quote AMC Part-M effective 19/12/2008 Annex I to ED Decision 2008/013/R of 12/12/2008.
AMC to Annex VIII "Limited Pilot/Owner Maintenance".
This annex specifies items that can be expected to be completed by an owner who holds a current and valid pilot licence for the type involved and who meets the competence and responsibility requirements of Appendix VIII to Part-M.
Check the listing and if it covers the laid down 50 hour check and it is in your maintenance programme permitting you to do this maintenance then away you go

[funfly]

As an ex owner of a few aircraft I can tell you that no-one will do the checks better on an aircraft than the guy who is going to fly it. Or no-one with any sense that is.
Anyway, what the hell do you do sitting with your aircraft day after day when the wind is too strong, the cloud base too low, the wind in the wrong direction, need I go on. There's a limit to how much you can polish the wings!

[smarthawke]

The other side of the coin is that owners don't like spending money so are less likely to find things that need replacing....

[IO540]

no-one will do the checks better on an aircraft than the guy who is going to fly itHow very very true :ok:

The one thing which suprised me when I first became an owner was that close to nobody working on planes had even a PPL and most would never go up in the air. Business-wise this is reasonable but in a business in which the line between "replacement" and "replacement on condition" is, for want of a better word......... occassionally just slightly blurred.... ??

The other side of the coin is that owners don't like spending money so are less likely to find things that need replacing.... True, though I suspect you will find a high correlation between owners who are stingy and owners who don't want to get involved in maintenance... From what I have seen, the stingiest owners tend to be flying schools and they can't do their own checks anyway (PT regs). I walked out of one school due to absolutely appalling maintenance.

Practically, and even if safety is not compromised, there is a price to pay for taking shortcuts on the 50hr checks: the Annual is going to cost you more, and no normal owner can do the Annual himself.

I have been in engineering for many years and have a pretty good understanding of the issues in this, and IMHO a lot of the mythical aura around aircraft maintenance is way overdone. Anybody who can maintain a lawn mower could do 90% of the average GA spamcan Annual just by following the checklist in the maintenance manual, and the remaining 10% can be learnt, or needs special or unusual tools. The mechanical sophistication of a typical GA plane, even a high end piston IFR tourer, is well below a Vauxhall Viva and is many ways comparable to the lawn mower. It would be illegal, of course.

Most of the time is spent on removing access covers, pulling out split pins, etc. Which is why most maintenance organisations don't like pulling out split pins to grease solid bushes/bearings... a quick squirt of oil "does the job just fine" ;)

The thing that keeps this aura going is the tight regulation of the maintenance business. However, as with all certification (whether in aviation, plumbing, domestic gas, ISO9000 and all similar crap, etc) the end job is only as good as the person doing it, and absolutely nothing is going to prevent all the boxes being ticked but the jobs not being done. Not even a duplicate inspection on every item, because "procedures" of that kind tend to be endemic within a whole company.

There are good companies and good engineers around (though a good individual is not going to be a terribly useful contact when the job is done by a company, because you never know who actually did the work) but it takes a little while to dig them out, and most owners start with zero knowledge - of both who is good/bad and of airfield politics.

When my plane was brand new, the JAR145 company (long gone now) would chew off the screws with a power screwdriver and I would quietly replace them afterwards. This was on a £600 50-hr check.

Own checks is not for everybody - most owners are not that mechanically minded - but they are a great opportunity for keeping a very close eye on one's plane (a bit like an extremely thorough preflight check every 50hrs) and will save a lot of money.

[Crash one]

As a toolmaker & flying a LAA type that is absolutely spot on.
Anyway,I couldn't afford the beaurocracy.

[A and C]

I think that owner maintenance is a good idea however it all depends on the owner, some do a superb job and are always ready to seek advice if they think that something is not right, these are the people who have taken the time to be shown how to do the job by a licenced engineer or LAA inspector.

Unfortunatly flying clubs are populated by a few people who think that the engineers are unskilled idiots who know nothing and charge the earth in exchange for very little work. these are the types who should not fix lawn mowers let alone aircraft, Resulting from inspections from this type of person I have seen oil filters that have not been removed, major structure damage undetected, brakes wrongly assembled and a whole host of other things that could result in an accident.

If you are in a group then you need to find out if the person doing the 50 hour check is up to the job before they cost you a lot of money when they damage the aircraft as a result of lack of skill or even worse send you flying in a death trap.

[Karl Bamforth]

As few ppl have said an owner/ppl can do his own 50hr and it is a good idea to save money and become better aquainted with the aircraft.

I don't really agree witht the comment of if you are flying it then you will look closer than anyone else.

I colud give you a long list of things owers either didn't look at or ignored in the past.

One such owner flew the aircraft to my location and said he had already inspected it and it just needed a signature.... yeah right.
My first question was did you find anything abnormal under the cowlings ? his answer NO.
Did you do a preflight ? answer YES.
Then how come you have 4 birdsnest under the cowlings, 2 very old and two with very well cooked chicks in which are clearly visible from the air inlets.

Another owner when told he would need to overhaul his mags appeared with two in the boot of his car still with leads connecting them both together. When I commented that all the mud on them made them look like they had just been pulled from a crash site he blushed, slammed the boot lid and drove off saying he would never use me as an engineer again. Opppsss too close to the truth was it.......

There are some very good and sensible owners out there but also a lot who do not even begin to realise the danger they put themselves and others in.

BTW I am an LAE and a PPL and even once owned an aircraft. :eek:

[smarthawke]

Hear, hear, Karl...

To play devil's avocado do you amateur aircraft engineers condone amateurs doing what your job is and do you think they can do it better than you can?

Doctors, accountants, solicitors, teachers etc etc, be it whatever. We can all read up on a subject and profess to be capable of doing the job but is it really better than the professionals?

The ability to do most jobs efficiently and correctly is through knowledge and that is best gained through experience - and that entails doing it all the time, not a couple of times a year.

I too speak as an LAE, PPL and aircraft owner (well until recently but watch this space).

[robin]

Interesting points, and there is certainly some truth in them.

Sadly, I had an aircraft maintained by a highly respected (and expensive) organisation which had an engine failure 3 weeks after a Star Annual because the qualified LAE failed to replace an obviously worn and perished pipe.

Making mistakes and taking shortcuts is not necessarily restricted to amateurs... There are some 'amateurs' I would use in preference to fully accredited organisations.